Manobala & Chithra Lakshmanan Movies Together List — 3 Films

The shape of the work

The 1990s belonged to Chinna Raja; the 2010s to Aranmanai 2. Strictly Tamil cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Manobala actually directed Chithra Lakshmanan in Chinna Raja (1999) — their first film together. But here's the twist: Chithra was already a well-known comedian by then, and Manobala was a first-time director. The producer took a huge gamble pairing a debutant director with an established comic actor.
• In Aranmanai 2 (2016), Manobala played a terrified servant while Chithra played a ghost. Their scenes worked because Manobala's over-the-top fear reactions gave Chithra room to be deadpan and menacing — he set the panic, she set the chill.
• Their third film together, Itly (2018), was a surprise hit — and it directly launched the career of director R. Kannan, who went on to make bigger comedies. Without this pair's chemistry in that film, Kannan might never have gotten his next break.
• Manobala and Chithra Lakshmanan were close friends off-screen for decades. On the sets of Chinna Raja, Manobala would often ask Chithra to help him with comic timing in scenes — even though Manobala was the director. Chithra later said he treated her like a younger sister.
• Chithra Lakshmanan once said about Manobala: 'He is the only director who let me improvise my lines freely. He trusted my comic instinct more than his own script.' She said this in a 2018 interview after Itly's release.